I think it was a bit uneven.
Some of the performances were certainly at a level beyond the typical Marvel fare, particularly Shuri, Ramonda, Nakiya and Okoye. It was neat to see some character development for M'Baku, taking over from Forrest Whittaker's Zuri as the primary counselor to the royal family.
They certainly handled the death of T'Challa with the requisite amount of grief and respect.
I found Ironheart to be a little bit awkward in terms of trying to be the cool teenaged Peter Parker type Ironwoman who is also the comic relief, but often introductions of new characters can be a bit challenging to hit the notes right.
A little bit more backstory in terms of her experience as a vigilante/hero would have made some of the later battle sequences against an immortal warrior a little more believable.
Valentina was a delight in just the right amount of limited usage.
Namor wasn't bad, in terms of being generally likeable and sympathetic despite the rather absurd plot. Their shared "slavery" pasts was a bit of a clumsy political messaging cudgel at times but it could have been handled a lot worse.
Conflicts have started up over lesser disputes, so while it was a bit silly, no doubt Wakanda was seen as the surface world's pre-eminent power so it makes sense to some extent that you might want to pre-emptively weaken them while the succession was still in the air.
The part that stretched the imagination for me is when the two rulers show up on their flying ship and tell everyone to stop fighting.
"Excuse me? Couldn't you two have figured this out before a whole bunch of us died?"
In any event, it was neat to see Killmonger again, Jordan did a solid job in representing his viewpoint, and Shuri's untapped grief and rage was clearly vulnerable to his beliefs.
I also couldn't help but laugh at the blue Mezo-Atlanteans because I keep seeing Avatar: the Way of Water as they are swimming around.
I think the bar for what a good Marvel film is has dropped of late, so it still stands as one of the better recent offerings. Overall, I think it was a stronger film than the latest Thor, the Dr. Strange sequel, Shang-Chi, and was roughly on par with the latest Spider Man film in terms of blending action with an emotionally resonant story.
But the more far-fetched the comic-based storylines, the more difficult it is to situate them in the "real world" which is what Marvel did so masterfully in the earlier Phases to create that suspension of disbelief in terms of imagining how our current society would handle these fantastic challenges and threats.
literally just finished it and can stop boycotting this thread.
